


If You Cannot Sleep at Night

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments in Porthos' life that lead to him becoming a Musketeer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Cannot Sleep at Night

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this huge pre-series thing about how Porthos got to be a musketeer, but then decided to go the vignettes route just because I couldn't get the story to formulate into a cohesive idea. And I very much wanted to write it from Porthos' POV and not, say, Treville's. So anyway. Obviously involves spoilers from 2x08.

**One.**  
Porthos is too young to remember this moment – bundled up in blankets, his mother’s arms curled around him. Protective. Secure. He is just an infant, eyes closed to the world. He stirs a little and she shushes him, but he’s a quiet infant, unassuming, and curls into her and soon sleeps peacefully – perfectly protected.

Porthos is too young to remember this moment – the moment when Marie Cessette stands alone, back rigid and defiant, her eyes afire in her anger as she stands in the middle of a dank and dark alleyway as two men – men of _honor_ – back away from her and her infant son. 

She does not dare cry. She does not dare bow down. She does not dare beg. She has spent too much of her life crushed beneath the heel of men such as these, and she will never falter again. She holds her son tight against the chill in the air and the pots and pans bang loudly as the rest of the Court shuns these intruders. 

She stands there, child in her arms, staring down the two men who turn their backs to her. They won’t see her devastation. Porthos stirs in her arms, turning closer into her as he sleeps. 

 

**Two.**  
This, though, Porthos does remember—

Kneeling next to his mother, wanting her to hold him and not understanding when she pushes him back gently, telling him she doesn’t want him to get sick, too. He remembers her skin hot to the touch, her hand touching his cheek and telling him that he’s so handsome and so kind, and to never forget himself. 

“I love you, Porthos,” she says as she’s said so many times in his life. 

He nods and says, “I love you, too, Mama.” 

He remembers her smile, broken and miserable, but always a little lighter when she looks at him. He remembers the way she looked at him like he was the most amazing thing in the world – because to her, he was. 

He does not understand why she cries. He’ll understand, years later, why she does – because she knows, and because she feels it, and because the worst thought of all is leaving him alone in this world, with no one to care for him, still too young to truly care about herself. 

He begins to cry because he does not understand. 

It doesn’t occur to him to pray for her life or to barter to some higher power for her life, because it doesn’t cross his mind that he might lose her. 

He remembers when she stops breathing. 

He remembers the exact moment he realizes he is alone.

 

**Three.**  
Life is dirt and grit and misery. That’s what he learns early on and lets it march down inside of him until he’s twisted up and hardened. His mother died abandoned and broken, never finding a chance to prosper. The wounded, the dying, the crippled who all live around him remind him every day that life is unfair and broken. He loses track of the days and the years and time – loses track of his own age, his own birthday, everything he knew before. 

When he leaves the Court, he doesn’t look back – not without regret, but uncrushed, not allowing himself to suffocate in that darkness. 

He drags himself out and he blinks and his breath shudders out in startled, halting breaths – but he is alive, and he is free, and he can make his way through the world. If there’s one thing he knows of his mother, it’s that she would never want him to stop fighting for what he wants. 

And so he doesn’t stop. 

Life beyond the Court is at once difficult and brilliant. He learns the joys of wine, of cards, of women’s smiles and soft hands. He learns the look of disgust and hatred, untempered out in the open. In the Court, at least, they were all outcasts, they were all foreign and unwanted. Out here, he is at once ignored and at once too noticeable. Out here, he is just as along as he’s always been. 

He grows used to being spat on, beat on, and scoffed at. He grows used to harnessing his aggression into duels rather than brawls and he grows used to being called a savage, a mongrel, a dog – whatever expletive they can imagine for the first time but that he’s heard for the hundredth. 

They believe they are crushing him. He is only letting himself grow. 

And the next morning, there is food and there is drink and there is fighting and soldiery – a way to be angry and fight and fall in line and flourish. The next morning, he finds another reason why it’s good to live. He finds another reason to keep moving forward.

And he always does. 

He leaves the Court angry, bony, and ready to fight – and he spends the years beyond the Court still angry, but growing out, and having fights to ease out the singing in his blood. He earns his place amongst the artillery. He maintains a measure of his offense and defense, and he picks the artillery in the first place for no particular reason other than he _can_ and his back was against the wall and he needed something. 

He is a stranger, foreign as ever, and it took more fight than it should have in order for him to earn his place – but earn it he did. He is strong and he is capable and he’s a fast learner, resilient and an improviser and he earns a reputation as a skilled fighter and a skilled soldier. If there are whispers of where he came from or his parentage, he ignores it or pretends not to hear and only fights all the harder the next day. 

He dreams of other places. He dreams of joining the Musketeers. But he dreams of the ocean – the sea wide open before him, warm and endlessly blue, a perfect summer sky. He envisions the new world full of its opportunities. He envisions marching east and traveling lands he’s only ever heard once or twice passed between the lips of men he doesn’t recognize. He nearly loses his life twice in one week serving in the artillery and he pictures places stretching out before him where he doesn’t have to always be fighting, where he can simply _be_. He promised his mother he would never stop fighting and he doesn’t intend to, even if he thinks this isn’t quite what she had in mind. 

 

**Four.**   
“Power. That’s quite the uppercut you’ve got there,” a voice says from behind him after he’s finished sparring for the day. 

When Porthos turns towards the voice, it’s to find that it belongs to the Captain of the King’s Musketeers. Porthos doesn’t know him, but he knows his face – has seen him leading the regiment around the king’s grounds the few times that Porthos has seen him. He knows him by sight only for his desire to join them one day. He isn’t sure what he’s doing here but he stays still, defensive despite himself, waiting for the follow-through comments of savagery and brutality he’s memorized at this point. The higher-ups are usually subtler, but they say it all the same more times than not. 

Porthos is large and fills up space now – a conscious choice on his part, after spending so many years of his life sinking into the shadows, of being stepped on, of being ridiculed and forgotten and unseen. Now, he fills out the space in the garrison, small as it is. He looks at this captain and thinks he could take him, easily, if it wouldn’t end up with him being hanged as a result – should the man insult him. He waits, again, for the jabs of his ancestry. 

None of it comes – instead, Captain Treville looks at him oddly, in a way that Porthos can’t place. As if he is studying him, as if he is memorizing him – or placing him again. He stands there, unsure how much respect he should give to a Captain that isn’t his own but unwilling to risk being impolite and getting a Court Martial for his troubles. 

“You’re Porthos, then,” Treville asks, canting his head to one side. 

“Porthos du Vallon,” he corrects, automatically, and wipes absently at his mouth to check for blood from the sparring he’d finished. There is none and he stands a little straighter. “You know me?” 

“Ah,” Treville says and there’s a long pause as if he is waiting for something else. He suddenly looks decades older. The moment passes. “I’ve heard many things about your skills here. You’ve made quite the name for yourself.” 

Porthos shrugs and then wonders if that’s disrespectful. He’s used to not meeting expectations – and the long pause from this captain is clear enough. He stands more rigid, at attention. 

“Tell me, then, Porthos,” Treville says when Porthos doesn’t answer. “Do you know who I am?” 

“You’re Captain Treville of the Musketeers,” Porthos says, automatic – and hopes he sounds neutral enough. He turns the corners of his mouth down in a thoughtful frown. “Did you need to see Captain Dupont? I can get him.”

“No, you’re who I wanted to see,” Treville says, removing his hat. 

 

**Five.**  
The Captain stops by the next day to personally congratulate him on his commission from the King and present him with his pauldron. It’s large, bulky, a tensed leather that the Captain promises will loosen up the more he wears it. He helps Porthos strap it on and offers to help him move his meager belongings to his new room at the garrison. Porthos declines, figures he should pay his respects to Captain Dupont before he leaves. Treville lingers in the doorway, looks as if he’ll say something more, but dismisses himself with a promise to see him soon. 

Even after the Captain leaves, Porthos can’t stop looking at his pauldron, dragging his fingers over the fleur-de-lis with an understated shock – still waiting for the moment he’ll wake up and it’ll all be over. 

He earned this. It’s his. 

He takes up the pendant of St. Jude and presses his lips to it, kissing the little saint and closing his eyes against the swell of his own happiness. 

He smiles, presses his hand over the fleur-de-lis entirely and nods his head a little. And if tears fall, well, there’s no one else around to judge him for it.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my tumblr is [here](http://stardropdream.tumblr.com/).


End file.
